{"id":274518,"date":"2023-10-15T07:00:21","date_gmt":"2023-10-15T07:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=274518"},"modified":"2023-10-16T06:50:56","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T06:50:56","slug":"alleged-iran-role-in-israel-attack-echoes-bogus-iraq-wmd-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=274518","title":{"rendered":"Alleged Iran Role in Israel Attack Echoes Bogus Iraq WMD Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ken Klippenstein \u2013 The Intercept Oct 12, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

One word was conspicuously absent from President Joe Biden\u2019s speech on Tuesday about Hamas\u2019s unprecedented attack on Israel: Iran.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, an explosive Wall Street Journal article accused<\/a> Iran of having helped Hamas plot the deadliest attack on Israel in 50 years, a claim that seemed engineered to draw the U.S. into war with Iran. But the Biden administration and the Israel Defense Forces, as well as current and former U.S. national security officials interviewed by The Intercept, say there\u2019s no evidence of direct Iranian involvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no evidence or proof\u201d of Iranian direction, Maj. Nir Dinar, IDF spokesperson, told Politico <\/a>on Monday \u2014 an assertion echoed by<\/a> Biden\u2019s national adviser, Jake Sullivan, on Tuesday. Though the Biden administration can be said to have a political stake in avoiding conflict with Iran ahead of an election year, two senior Pentagon officials also told The Intercept that efforts to determine Iranian direction are intensive and ongoing but that no proof has emerged.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand why the Wall Street Journal\u2019s nondescript \u2018Hamas and Hezbollah\u2019 sources are more trustworthy than the U.S. government\u2019s sources, who receive extraordinary scrutiny,\u201d J.D. Maddox, a former CIA branch chief, told The Intercept.<\/p>\n

The New York Times reported<\/a> on Wednesday that the Hamas attack surprised Iranian leadership \u2014 a claim echoed later that day in a report<\/a> by the Wall Street Journal, contradicting its own previous reporting.<\/p>\n

Monitoring leadership for communications evincing foreknowledge after a major attack is a common practice for intelligence services. Such communications are valuable indicators of whether parties knew of an operation beforehand.<\/p>\n

Despite the growing evidence to the contrary, Iran hawks like John Bolton have seized on the narrative that Iran directed Hamas\u2019s attack, advancing the claim in a CNN interview<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBolton has no access to intelligence besides the newspaper,\u201d former Obama administration National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor fumed<\/a> on X. \u201cZero lessons learned from the Iraq war propaganda disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several other former national security officials also drew parallels between claims of Iranian direction of Hamas\u2019s attack and the Iraq weapons of mass destruction fiasco.<\/p>\n

\u201cSame suspects, different war,\u201d retired Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told The Intercept. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine Iran would jeopardize the talks with the U.S. Perhaps interpose no objections and continue arms supplies, but no promotion of the attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran is a longtime sponsor of Hamas, and there\u2019s no question<\/a> that the country provides critical logistical support to the militant group. But whether they directed the attack is another matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sense is that nuance on this issue is critical,\u201d Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA officer who worked in the region, said <\/a>on X. \u201cThe difference between \u2018directing\u2019 the attack and giving the actual green light (as stated here) vs \u2018coordinating\u2019 may be [the] difference between war with Iran or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that evidence of Iranian sponsorship exists and simply hasn\u2019t emerged yet, but that reasoning echoes the Iraq WMD imbroglio. \u201cIf the Israeli government had any evidence at all of direct Iranian involvement in the Hamas attack, it is very likely that Israel would let the world know about that,\u201d Paul Pillar, a former chief analyst at the CIA\u2019s counterterrorism center, told The Intercept.<\/p>\n

According to Pillar, Hamas had plenty of incentive to conduct the operation on its own, including acquiring hostages as bargaining chips to free Palestinian prisoners and also to torpedo the Saudi\u2013Israel normalization deal<\/a> being pursued by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven extensive relations involving material support do not imply any operational direction or instigation,\u201d Pillar said. \u201cA similar situation is Iran\u2019s relationship with the Houthis in Yemen, who have benefitted from Iranian material support but seized the Yemeni capital of Sana against the advice of Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran has issued fiery statements celebrating the attack, feeding into the theory that they directed it. But experts say it\u2019s more complicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran\u2019s praise for Hamas\u2019s attack sounds a lot like Saudi\u2019s praise for the attack,\u201d Maddox, the former CIA branch chief, said. \u201cIsrael is surrounded by detractors. It would be wise to withhold judgment until there\u2019s clear evidence of direct support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The warmongers would love to find evidence that Iran was behind the recent Hamas attack on Israel. But officials acknowledge that they have yet to find anything that points to direct Iranian involvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,51,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Hidden_and_Revisionist_History","category-Iran","category-Iraq"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274519,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274518\/revisions\/274519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}